Met Police 0 Harlow 31

(19th October 2008)

Friendly

Police Met their match

Harlow Ladies made the long trip to play the Met Police at their salubrious ground near to Hampton Court keen to maintain their free-flowing unbeaten start to the season. Sarah Stimpson made a welcome return to fly-half after recovering quicker than expected from an ankle injury but star outside-centre Becky Conway was missing after fracturing her hand in the league victory over Thames and Nikki King was unavailable. Hooker Emily Gizzy made the switch to the wide open spaces of inside-centre and the regular Harlow 12, Davina McLellen, moved out a place and started in the 13 shirt. The versatile Nikki Millman moved to scrum-half in King’s absence, her fourth different position in four matches!

After a delayed start the match eventually kicked off with Harlow receiving the kick-off playing into the breeze. Harlow immediately tried to play their expansive offloading style and utilise the superior pace of the Harlow backs but they were not as accurate as they have been playing recently and a number of early chances were missed with the play appearing a little scrappy at times. However, once the initial play was over, Harlow strung together their best passage of play that produced two tries and arguably their best try of the season to date. The first try came after strong runs from McLellan and McKenna up the middle and after a loop behind from Stimpson, the determined fly-half picked the ball up after a loose offload and used her pace to clear the cover defence and score under the posts from half-way. 5 minutes later came a sublime team try that saw a dizzying number of skilful offloads, clever running lines and high levels of skill. Virtually every back touched the ball at least twice as they interplayed with each other up the left hand side intelligently ignoring contact and looking and passing early to a teammate in space. The Met Police were left totally bewildered as Stimpson took the final pass in acres of space to stroll under the posts where she unselfishly popped the ball to the tireless Harlow flanker McCarthy for her first try in rugby. Unfortunately, this try appeared to be the catalyst for the referee to take every available opportunity from then on to penalise Harlow and also for the Met Police to use every trick in the book to slow Harlow down. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the Met Police physio ran far more metres than any of their players! With the game now having an interminable series of interruptions from either the referee penalising Harlow or for the referee holding up play while a Met Police player tied a shoelace or adjusted a hair band any Harlow rhythm, tempo and pressure was totally disrupted and they struggled to play the patterns they work on in training. In this environment, it is easy to get disheartened and lose focus but to their credit, Harlow tried as best they could to adapt and a great individual run from McLellen gave Harlow their third try of the half with Gizzi slotting the conversion.

Half-Time Met Police 0 – Harlow 17

The third quarter of the match was a turgid affair as Harlow easily contained any effort that the Met Police side mustered in attack but the constant interruptions and penalties from the referee were by now totally negating the quick offload style that Harlow like to play and frustrations were evident right throughout the side. With the half still scoreless after 20 minutes played, the powerful Harlow scrum, which had taken at least 4 scrums against the head, produced a solid platform for Millman to pass the ball flat to Stimpson. After taking a well executed circle-pass from Gizzi, the wide option of McLellan powered into the vision of the defending Met Police backs which drew them across, and, sensing the space, Stimpson straightened up and simply ran through the gap and after a shimmy to dispatch the fullback, she scored under the posts for her second try. Gizzi converted. The stop-start nature of the game continued but eventually the Harlow forwards got a deserved reward for their hard work when Cotterill picked up and powered over in the last play of the match. Gizzi slotted an excellent conversion from a difficult angle.

Congratulations to Toni Beard and Paulette Tovey who made their debuts for Harlow and had their first taste of rugby after just 1 training session.

Final Score Met Police 0 - Harlow 31

This week, the Harlow Ladies will be being put through their paces in training by Helen Clayton, the 83 times capped England flanker. The next game on 26^th October is a home friendly against local rivals Tabard.

Tries: Stimpson 2, McCarthy 1, McLellan 1, Cotterill 1

Conversions: Gizzi 3

1. Acraman; 2. Souch; 3. Lucas; 4. Lacey; 5. Clarke; 6. Trounce; 7. McCarthy; 8. Cotterill (Captain); 9. Millman; 10. Stimpson; 11. Perry; 12. Gizzi; 13. McLellan; 14. Mercer; 15. McKenna; 16. Tovey; 17. Beard

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